For in her jealousy to be God . . .

Imagine your New Year’s resolution is to follow for a year every piece of advice Oprah Winfrey doles out in her O Magazine and on her OWN cable network. This is what one Chicago yoga instructor committed to do.

If you’ve ever listened to Oprah Winfrey’s testimony about how she “advanced” out of her Christian upbringing into her “enlightened” state of consciousness, she boils it down to the fact she couldn’t buy into the Bible’s jealous God.

She once informed her “Oprah” TV show audience, “I was raised a Baptist (in Mississippi) and we were too hung up on traditional ways. I was sitting in church and heard that God is a jealous God. I asked, ‘Why?’ Come on—let's get over it!”

Relating a jealous God to an insecure God, Oprah reasoned, “I don’t think God is hung up on what you believe about God—whatever that ‘force’ is, it doesn't care what you call it. He doesn't have an ego problem.”

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Most likely the Bible reference Oprah heard that day was from Exodus 34, where God, in giving Moses the Ten Commandments atop Mount Sinai, ordered:

“But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.”

Or maybe it was Deuteronomy 6:15: "(For the LORD thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth."

By saying He’s jealous, God is saying exactly what the Apostle Paul says in II Corinthians 11:2: “For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.”

The message is God’s fierce love makes Him abhor the thought of any of His children going astray to worship other gods to their own destruction.

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Anybody who knows anything about Oprah knows she pushes a “You’re God, I’m God” philosophy.

As Oprah’s main religious guru, bestseller New Age author Eckhart Tolle, insists, “If you believe only your religion is the Truth, you are using it in the service of the ego. . . There is only one absolute Truth, and all the other truths emanate from it. . . The Truth is inseparable from who you are. Yes, you ARE the Truth.

“If you look for it elsewhere, you will be deceived every time. The very Being that you are is Truth. Jesus tried to convey that when he said, ‘I am the way and the truth and the life’. . . Jesus speaks of the innermost I am, the essence identity of every man and woman, every life-form, in fact. He speaks of the life you are.

“Some Christian mystics have called it the Christ within; Buddhists call it your Buddha nature; for Hindus, it is Atman, the indwelling God. When you are in touch with that dimension within yourself—and being in touch with it is your natural state, not some miraculous achievement—all your actions and relationships will reflect the oneness with all life that you sense deep within. This is love.”

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Jordan makes the point, “If you don’t have the Bible, you can’t distinguish between your soul and your spirit, and if you can’t distinguish between the two you’re going to wind up thinking you are God because your spirit is cut off from God—can’t communicate with Him. The only thing it can communicate with is satanic spirits.

“What did Satan tell Eve? Imagine telling Eve, ‘God doesn’t want you to eat that fruit because He knows when you eat it, you’ll be like the gods.’

“Tell me something—who was Eve? When God decided to create Adam and Eve what did He say? ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,’ and it was ‘in the image of God created he him; male and female.’

“Weren’t Adam and Eve already like God? Satan says, ‘You can be like one of the gods,’ plural; the angels. If I’m godlike, why would I want to stoop down to be angel-like?

“You see what a con he was pulling on her? She was already godlike. She was already made in the image of God.

“To fall for Satan’s lie she had to abandon the identity God already gave her. But she wanted to be her own God. That was the ploy. Kind of a nutty thing but she fell for it.

“God’s Word is able to distinguish between the two parts of your inner man and it’s ‘a discerner of the thoughts and intents of your heart.’ Has it ever dawned on you that somebody can read your mind and it’s not your mama?”

(another article tomorrow)